WASHINGTON - Donald Trump on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to bar a prosecutor from obtaining his tax returns, arguing that as president he has blanket immunity.
Trump, a former New York businessman, is the first American president since Richard Nixon not to make his tax returns public, arguing they're under audit by the Internal Revenue Service.
Opposition Democrats have turned to the courts to force their release in a case that's considered a crucial test of the separation of powers. And if the US high court -- where conservative judges hold the majority -- decides to take up the case, their decision will receive endless scrutiny.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, a Democrat, has demanded Trump's tax returns dating back to 2011 as part of an investigation into payments made by Michael Cohen, the president's former personal attorney, to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who claimed to have had a sexual liaison with Trump before he ran for president in 2016.
Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that Trump must hand over the documents.
But the president's attorneys argue that he enjoys immunity both from prosecution and from any acts of investigation.
"For the first time in our nation's history, a state or local prosecutor has launched a criminal investigation of the President of the United States and subjected him to coercive criminal process," Trump's attorney Jay Sekulow said, according to US media.
"Politically motivated subpoenas like this one are a perfect illustration of why a sitting president should be categorically immune from state criminal process," he said.
At a hearing on the case on Oct. 23, one of Trump's lawyers went so far as to argue that the president would have immunity even if he shot someone in the street -- a statement immediately challenged by jurists and mocked by Democrats.
There have been various other attempts to obtain the returns by Democratic lawmakers in New York and in the House of Representatives.
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WASHINGTON - Court documents released Thursday closely tied President Donald Trump and his former top aide Hope Hicks to hush money paid to a porn actress ahead of the 2016 election.
But a New York judge said the investigation into the payment was closed, making it likely that neither the president nor anyone but his former lawyer Michael Cohen will be punished for them.
The FBI warrant requests released Thursday show the law enforcement agency believed Trump and Hicks were intimately involved in arranging the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels -- the screen name for Stephanie Clifford.
The documents map out a flurry of phone calls and text messages in October 2016, when Cohen was arranging the payment to Daniels to keep her from going public with her claim of an affair years earlier with Trump.
The exchanges involved Cohen, Daniels' attorney Keith Davidson, media executives David Pecker and Dylan Howard, Trump and Hicks, and came as Daniels was quietly offering to sell her story about Trump to media just weeks before a hotly contested election.
Cohen was ultimately convicted and imprisoned on campaign finance and other violations.
NUMEROUS CALLS
The documents show eight calls, including two involving Trump and three with Hicks, on October 8, 2016, as Cohen prepared a plan to buy Daniels' silence at, he has said, Trump's direction.
The FBI noted that before that day, Cohen had not spoken by phone to Trump or Hicks -- Trump's campaign press secretary and then his White House communications director -- for several weeks.
It took weeks to finalize the deal, after communications suggested that Daniels was still preparing to sell her story to Britain's Daily Mail.
After some panicky communications, on October 26 -- two weeks before the election -- Cohen spoke to Trump multiple times. Over the next two days, he created a shell company to handle the payoff and transferred the funds.
"Based on the timing of the calls... and the content of the text messages and emails, I believe that at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent Clifford from going public," an FBI investigator wrote.
Trump, who has both denied knowledge of the payment and argued they were not a crime, was implicated as "Individual-1" in court documents last year in the Cohen case, raising the possibility that he too could be charged for the hush money payment.
ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION
The court ruled that the payment to Daniels, which Trump later repaid to Cohen, amounted to an illegal campaign contribution because it aimed at helping Trump win the election.
The documents also show Cohen liaising with Trump, Hicks and White House advisor Kellyanne Conway in early November 2016 over a looming Wall Street Journal story that the National Enquirer had bought the silence of another alleged former Trump lover, Karen McDougal.
When the story gained little traction in other media, Hicks and Cohen enthused in text messages that the efforts to counter it had worked.
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow on Thursday hailed the closure of the investigation in a statement to media.
"We have maintained from the outset that the President never engaged in any campaign finance violation," he said.
Cohen said in a statement, issued through his publicist, that Sekulow's comments were "completely distorted and dishonest."
"The conclusion of the investigation exonerating The Trump Organization's role should be of great concern to the American people and investigated by Congress and the Department of Justice," he said.
Adam Schiff, the Democratic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, questioned whether the Department of Justice had ended the investigation in order to protect Trump.
"The inescapable conclusion from all of the public materials available now is that there was ample evidence to charge Donald Trump with the same criminal election law violations for which Michael Cohen pled guilty and is now serving time in prison," Schiff said in a statement.
"Were Individual-1 not protected by the DOJ opinion prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president, he would be criminally charged as Cohen's co-conspirator."
pmh/wd
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NEW YORK- Michael Avenatti's legal troubles escalated on Wednesday as federal prosecutors announced new indictments accusing the lawyer and prominent critic of U.S. President Donald Trump of ripping off porn star Stormy Daniels and extorting Nike Inc.
Prosecutors in Manhattan accused Avenatti, 48, of stealing about $300,000 from Daniels, the client who made him famous, to fund an extravagant lifestyle including a Ferrari automobile, after helping her secure a book contract.
The Nike indictment concerns charges announced in March that Avenatti tried to extort more than $20 million from the athletic wear company by threatening to expose what he called its improper payments to recruits for college basketball teams it sponsored.
Avenatti also faces dozens of charges in southern California, where prosecutors on April 11 accused him of stealing millions of dollars from clients to pay for personal and business expenses, and lying to the Internal Revenue Service and a Mississippi bank about his finances.
If convicted on all charges, Avenatti could face more than 400 years in prison, but would likely face a lesser punishment.
Nike has denied wrongdoing, and assisted prosecutors prior to Avenatti's arrest.
Avenatti has maintained his innocence and said the earlier prosecutions were to punish him for representing Daniels and criticizing Trump.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, received hush money to keep quiet about an affair she claimed to have had with Trump in 2006. The president has denied having had sex with Daniels.
"I look forward to a jury hearing all of the evidence and passing judgment on my conduct," Avenatti wrote on Twitter after the indictments were announced.
"At no time was any money misappropriated or mishandled. I will be fully exonerated once the relevant emails, contracts, text messages, and documents are presented."
He later said in an email that Daniels had received "millions of dollars worth of legal services."
Lawyers for Avenatti did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Daniels could not immediately be reached.
BOOK ADVANCE
Avenatti represented Daniels in lawsuits arising from a $130,000 hush money payment from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
Prosecutors said Avenatti diverted two $148,750 installment payments from Daniels' $800,000 book advance, after sending her literary agent a letter that forged her signature, and directed that money be sent to his bank account.
Daniels is identified in court papers as "Victim-1." A person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed her identity.
According to the papers, Avenatti spent some of the diverted funds on lease payments for the Ferrari, hotels, airfare, restaurant meals, car service and business expenses.
Prosecutors said Avenatti eventually paid $148,750 to Daniels after obtaining the money from another source, but lied when she asked where the second payment was by telling her the publisher "owes me a payment" and that he was "on it."
Daniels has not received that payment, prosecutors said. She dropped Avenatti as her lawyer earlier this year.
"Michael Avenatti abused and violated the core duty of an attorney--the duty to his client," U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who announced Wednesday's indictments, said in a statement.
"Far from zealously representing his client, Avenatti, as alleged, instead engaged in outright deception and theft, victimizing rather than advocating for his client," Berman added.
The charges related to Daniels include one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, and carry a maximum combined penalty of 22 years in prison.
Daniels' book "Full Disclosure" was published in October.
Cohen is two weeks into his three-year prison term after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, including the hush money payment.
Avenatti became a familiar face on cable news channels as his stature grew, and flirted last year with a 2020 White House run. He has had a lower profile since being charged.
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NEW YORK - Adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who has claimed she had a sexual encounter with U.S. President Donald Trump a decade ago, said on Wednesday that she has written a no holds barred memoir about her running legal battles with Trump and her life as a stripper.
Daniels, 39, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said on ABC's "The View" that her book, "Full Disclosure," would be released by St. Martin's Press, a subsidiary of MacMillan Publishers, on Oct. 2.
Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.
Daniels said she wrote about her work as well as suing Trump. Her lawsuit seeks to void a non-disclosure agreement she signed just before the 2016 presidential election to remain silent about what she has called an "intimate" relationship with Trump.
She claimed in the lawsuit, filed in March in Los Angeles, that the non-disclosure agreement was invalid and she was free to publicly discuss her relationship with Trump because he never signed it.
Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to violating federal election law by paying Daniels $130,000 not to disclose information that would be harmful to Trump.
"You didn't really think I'd hold anything back?" Daniels said on TV on Wednesday.
St. Martin's Press said in a statement that Daniels' book would describe "the events that led to the nondisclosure agreement and behind the scenes attempts to intimidate her."
In April, Daniels filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in a Manhattan court claiming that he had falsely attacked her truthfulness.
Earlier this year, Daniels said that in 2011 she was assailed by a man in a Las Vegas Parking Lot who threatened her if she discussed her alleged sexual encounter with Trump. In a tweet Trump described her claim as a "total con job."
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WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has formally disclosed that he reimbursed his personal attorney more than $100,000 last year, apparently in connection with the payment of hush money to a porn star, government records show.
The disclosure caps a series of contradictory statements from Trump and his representatives on the scandal swirling around lawyer Michael Cohen -- which has widened to ensnare major corporations and a Russian oligarch.
The documents released Wednesday by a US government ethics body, do not specify the reason for the payments to Cohen, who paid $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims she had a tryst with Trump in 2006 while he was married. The president denies the affair, and initially denied all knowledge of the payment, which Cohen has acknowledged was intended to stop her from going public with the allegations.
Trump's claim began to unravel early this month, however, after Rudy Giuliani, a new member of the president's legal team, said Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the sum paid to Daniels -- and the president himself subsequently acknowledged the repayment.
A footnote to disclosures submitted Tuesday to the Office of Government Ethics said Cohen had incurred "expenses" on Trump's behalf in 2016 of between $100,001 and $250,000.
"Mr. Cohen sought reimbursement of those expenses and Mr. Trump fully reimbursed Mr. Cohen in 2017," it said.
Trump's filing states that the president was not required to disclose Cohen's expenses, but was doing so in the interest of transparency.
But an accompanying letter to the Justice Department from David Apol, the acting head of the Office of Government Ethics, said the payments by Cohen were indeed required to be reported, as also argued by an outside government ethics group which had lodged official complaints in March.
Apol told Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that he was providing both Trump's 2017 and 2018 disclosures, as potentially "relevant to any inquiry" the Justice Department may be pursuing into the president's filings from last year.
CASHING IN ON ACCESS TO TRUMP
Stormy Daniels is suing to be released from the hush agreement reached with Cohen, claiming it is invalid because Trump never signed it.
The president's lawyer, meanwhile, finds himself under investigation by federal prosecutors who seized reams of evidence in raids on his home and office last month but have not revealed what crimes he may have committed.
Cohen also stands accused of seeking to cash in on his proximity to the president, after it emerged he received millions of dollars from a Russian oligarch and major corporations seeking access to the administration.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis Wednesday announced the retirement of its top legal expert over the $1.2 million in payments to Cohen, while AT&T has said it made a "big mistake" by paying the lawyer some $600,000.
The scandal engulfing Cohen has opened a new front in the legal challenges dogging Trump, grabbing headlines from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ominous investigation into possible collusion between the president's 2016 campaign and Russia.
The disclosure of Trump's payments to his lawyer came the same day a Senate intelligence panel released thousands of pages of testimony from its probe into a meeting between the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, and a Russian lawyer who offered to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
In his testimony released Wednesday, Trump Jr said he did not tell his father ahead of time about the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, also attended by the Republican candidate's campaign manager Paul Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The newly-released financial documents also offered a glimpse of the performance of 2 of Trump's flagship hotels: the Trump International Hotel in Washington -- which has attracted crowds of lobbyists, lawmakers an d foreign governments with business before the federal government, and Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, dubbed the "Winter White House."
Trump's hotel in the US capital, which opened in late 2016, took in $40.4 million during 2017 while the Florida resort had revenues of $25.1 million last year.
A prior disclosure made last year covered a 16-month period and showed $37.3 million in revenues for Mar-a-Lago.
The report also showed Trump earned between $230,000 and $1.1 million in capital gains income on stock in iPhone maker Apple, Caterpillar, Microsoft and Pepsico.
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WASHINGTON - Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who joined President Donald Trump's legal team last month, said on Wednesday that Trump repaid the $130,000 his lawyer gave to an adult-film star to buy her silence about an alleged affair with the president.
Trump has said he did not know about the payment to Stormy Daniels, who says she had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006. Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, the money in 2016 to keep quiet about the alleged sexual encounter before the presidential election.
In an interview on Fox News, Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and longtime friend of Trump, said the president knew about the $130,000 payment and reimbursed Cohen.
"They funneled it through a law firm and the president repaid it," Giuliani said.
"He didn't know about the specifics of it, as far as I know, but he did know about the general arrangement that Michael would take care of things like this," Giuliani said.
He said the payment did not violate campaign finance laws because it was not drawn from Trump campaign funds.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When asked by reporters on April 5 if he knew about the payment to Daniels, Trump responded, "No." Asked why Cohen made the payment, Trump said: "You'll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You'll have to ask Michael."
Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket and was not reimbursed by Trump.
The White House has denied Trump had sex with Daniels.
Daniels has sued Trump and Cohen to be released from the non-disclosure agreement, saying it was invalid because Trump never signed it. She has also sued Trump for defamation.
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NEW YORK, United States - Federal agents on Monday raided the New York offices of Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who made a $130,000 payment to an adult film actress who says she had a tryst with the US president.
Cohen's own attorney Stephen Ryan said agents were working in part on the request of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating links between Russia and the Trump campaign.
But US media said documents seized in the raid related to the surreptitious payment Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels just ahead of the 2016 presidential election that, according to Daniels, aimed to keep her quiet about her earlier relationship with Trump.
Cohen has been Trump's personal lawyer and confidant for years, advising him on real estate and personal matters, as well as supporting him since he became president.
Ryan lashed out at prosecutors over the raid, which came as Mueller seeks to interview Trump for his sprawling investigation.
Mueller is examining possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Moscow, allegations of corrupt behavior by Trump campaign lieutenants, and of White House efforts to obstruct the investigation.
"The decision by the US attorney's office in New York to conduct their investigation using search warrants is completely inappropriate and unnecessary," Ryan said.
"It resulted in the unnecessary seizure of protected attorney-client communications between a lawyer and his clients."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York District Attorney's office and Mueller's Office of the Special Counsel also declined comment.
ALLEGED AFFAIR WITH TRUMP
Cohen, who has worked with Trump for at least a decade, is known as the real estate magnate's "fixer" and "pit bull."
He told ABC News in 2011 that if Trump has a problem with someone, "I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump's benefit."
"If you do something wrong, I'm going to come at you, grab you by the neck, and I'm not going to let you go until I'm finished," he said.
He does not represent Trump in dealing with Mueller. But his fight with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has become a political and legal minefield for him and the president.
Last month Daniels told 21 million TV watchers that she had unprotected sex with Trump after meeting with him at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California in July 2006. That was shortly after Trump's wife Melania gave birth to their son.
After months of pressure, in February Cohen admitted making the $130,000 payment via a shell company to Daniels as part of a non-disclosure agreement.
He insisted that neither the Trump Organization, the president's real estate group, nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Clifford.
"Neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly," Cohen said in a statement.
Trump has not admitted an affair with Daniels. Last week, he broke his silence on the issue and denied knowing anything about the $130,000 payment to her.
Daniels, though, is seeking to break the nondisclosure agreement, to allow her to freely talk about her relationship with Trump.
Supported by high-powered lawyer Michael Avenatti, she filed a lawsuit in California in March to declare the pact invalid.
Cohen countersued saying Daniels is liable for at least $20 million for violating the hush agreement by publicly discussing the affair on multiple occasions.
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WASHINGTON, United States - US President Donald Trump broke a 2 month silence Thursday about allegations he slept with a porn star, insisting that he did not pay her $130,000 hush money.
Trump offered a flat "no" when asked if he knew about the payment that was made by his lawyer shortly before the 2016 election.
The actress, Stephanie Clifford -- who goes by the screen name Stormy Daniels -- claims it was money paid to cover up a tryst more than a decade ago.
Trump's long-time lawyer Michael Cohen has admitted to making the payment, but has not indicated why he made it.
He has accused Daniels of breaching a non-disclosure agreement.
Trump said he did not know why Cohen made the payment. "You'll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You'll have to ask Michael."
Asked if he knew where the money came from, Trump told reporters on Air Force One, "No, I don't know."
That claim was immediately challenged by Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti.
"We very much look forward to testing the truthfulness of Mr. Trump's feigned lack of knowledge concerning the $130k payment," he tweeted.
"As history teaches us, it is one thing to deceive the press and quite another to do so under oath."
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U.S. President Donald Trump's personal lawyer asked a federal judge on Monday to force adult film star Stormy Daniels to use arbitration to settle a dispute over an agreement to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, last month sued Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney, to be released from the non-disclosure agreement she signed in October 2016 in exchange for $130,000.
The White House has denied that Trump had sex with Daniels. Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket.
In Monday's court filing in Los Angeles, Brent Blakely, Cohen's attorney, argued the agreement included a provision that any disputes over it be settled through arbitration, as opposed to open court.
Federal law "dictates that this motion be granted, and that Clifford be compelled to arbitration, as she knowingly and voluntarily agreed to do," Blakely wrote.
Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, said the matter should be settled in open court.
"We will vigorously oppose the just-filed motion by Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen to have this case decided in a secret arbitration, in a private conference room, purposely hidden from the American public," Avenatti said in a statement.
Last week, U.S. District Judge S. James Otero ruled that a request by Daniels to depose Trump and Cohen was premature because they had yet to formally request that she arbitrate her claims.
Avenatti has argued that the non-disclosure agreement is invalid because Trump never signed it. But in Monday's filing Blakely responded that the language of the agreement did not specify that Trump, using the pseudonym David Dennison, needed to sign it for the agreement to be binding.
Blakely also argued that Daniels accepted the $130,000 and did not dispute the agreement for 16 months even though Trump had not signed it.
Daniels has said she and Trump had sex once in 2006 but that they kept in touch for a period of time.
A former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, has described having a 10-month affair with Trump starting the same year, which the White House has said Trump denies. Trump was married to his wife Melania at the time.
(Reporting by Eric Beech in Washington Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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WASHINGTON, United States - The lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the porn star who claims to have had a one-night stand with Donald Trump, said Wednesday he wants the president to testify about the non-disclosure agreement she signed.
Michael Avenatti filed the motion Tuesday with the Los Angeles court that is hearing Daniels' suit seeking to have the agreement declared invalid.
The motion asks the court to order that Trump and his personal lawyer Michael Cohen be produced to give depositions for two hours ahead of a trial.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, signed the non-disclosure agreement just days before the 2016 presidential election in return for $130,000.
But her lawyer argues that the agreement is invalid because Trump failed to sign the document. Cohen claims he paid Daniels himself.
"The motion is set to be heard on April 30, 2018. We are confident that the Court will permit the requested discovery after applying Supreme Court precedent and the well established law in the Ninth Circuit," Avenatti tweeted.
A spokesman for Cohen, David Schwartz, called the motion a "reckless use of the legal system."
"This is politically motivated and people see through this charade," he said.
The White House on Monday said Trump "has strongly, clearly and has consistently denied" allegations of sexual liaison.
In an interview that aired Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes" show, Daniels said she had been threatened by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 who warned her to "leave Trump alone."
She had just given an interview to the magazine "In Touch," in which she claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump in July 2006.
She said she stayed in contact with Trump for the better part of 2007 because he had said he would try to get her on "The Apprentice," the reality TV show he hosted at the time.
At the time, Trump was married to his current wife, Melania, who had recently given birth to their son, Barron.
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WASHINGTON - Stormy Daniels sued Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen on Monday for defamation, according to court documents, escalating a legal battle between the American president and the porn star that the White House was struggling to contain.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, made the claim a day after her widely watched TV interview on "60 Minutes" on CBS. Daniels said she was threatened with violence to keep quiet about her alleged 2006 tryst with Trump.
At the White House, a spokesman in a briefing with reporters cast aspersions on her account. The White House has denied allegations that Trump had a sexual relationship with Daniels.
CBS Corp said the show drew its biggest audience in more than eight years, with 21.3 million Americans tuning in, more than double the previous week's edition of "60 Minutes."
Presidential spokesman Raj Shah told the briefing, "The president doesn't believe any of the claims Ms. Daniels made in the interview last night were accurate."
Asked if Trump believed Daniels was threatened, Shah said, "No, he does not. ... There's nothing to corroborate her claim."
Daniels' "60 Minutes" appearance also drew a denial from the president's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, that he was involved in the alleged threat of violence against her.
Daniels originally sued Trump on March 6, saying he never signed an agreement for her to stay silent about what she called their "intimate" relationship. Monday's filing in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles amended the original lawsuit to say Daniels was defamed.
Her attorney, Michael Avenatti, said Cohen "meant to convey that Ms. Clifford is a liar, someone who should not be trusted, and that her claims about her relationship with Mr. Trump" were not true.
Daniels' defamation allegation was based on a Feb. 13 statement by Cohen that she said hurt her reputation.
The latest filing also said $130,000 Cohen paid Daniels in October 2016 just before the presidential election to secure her silence amounted to an illegal campaign contribution, and that the agreement should be declared void.
Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket, but has not explained why or if Trump was aware of the payment.
In filings with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission, watchdog groups have said the $130,000 may have exceeded campaign contribution limits, violating U.S. law. Cohen has denied this.
California attorney Michael Overing, who specializes in defamation law, said it would be difficult for Daniels to prevail on her defamation claim because she is a public figure.
To prove libel, she would have to show that a false statement was made with either reckless or purposeful disregard for the truth, Overing said.
Trump attorney Cohen's denial of involvement in the alleged threat against Daniels came in a "cease-and-desist" letter sent to Avenatti shortly after "60 Minutes" aired that demanded a retraction and an apology. A copy of the letter was seen by Reuters on Monday.
The letter said, "Mr. Cohen had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident, and does not even believe that any such person exists, or that such incident ever occurred."
Daniels said the threat of harm was made by a stranger in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011.
Avenatti said on NBC on Monday that the man who threatened her while she was with her infant daughter was not Cohen, but "had to be someone that is related to Mr. Trump or Mr. Cohen."
Last week CNN interviewed former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who described a 10-month affair with Trump starting in 2006.
Trump was married to his wife, Melania, during both alleged relationships. In addition to denying Trump had sex with Daniels, the White House has said he denies having an affair with McDougal.
(Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Makini Brice; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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WASHINGTON - An adult-film actress who claims she had sex with Donald Trump before he was president said on Sunday she had been threatened in 2011 while in a parking lot with her infant daughter to discourage her from discussing the relationship.
Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told CBS News' "60 Minutes" that she was on her way to a fitness class with her child when an unknown man approached her, according to a transcript of the interview released on Sunday.
"And a guy walked up on me and said to me, 'Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.' And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, 'That’s a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom.' And then he was gone," Daniels said.
Daniels sued the president on March 6, stating Trump never signed an agreement for her to keep quiet about an "intimate" relationship between them.
Daniels' appearance represented back to back trouble for Trump after an interview broadcast last week on CNN with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who described a 10-month long affair with Trump starting in 2006.
Trump would have been married to his wife, Melania, during both the alleged extramarital relationships. The first lady accompanied him this weekend to his Florida golf club. Trump returned to the White House on Sunday but a White House spokeswoman said Melania stayed behind as is her tradition during their son's school holiday.
NOT ATTRACTED
Daniels told "60 Minutes" that she and Trump had had sexual relations only once, but that she had seen him other occasions and he had kept in touch with her.
She said she was not attracted to Trump, who was 60, to Daniels' 27, in 2006.
The White House has denied he had an affair with Daniels, although Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said he paid her $130,000 of his own money during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
Trump did not respond to reporters' shouted questions about whether he would watch the interview when he returned to the White House from Florida.
Cohen, who has denied that there was an affair, has not explained why he made the payment or said whether Trump was aware of it.
Daniels and her attorney would not discuss in the interview whether they had text messages or other materials that might verify her story.
She was asked why she repeatedly signed statements denying the relationship with Trump, and acknowledged that there could be questions about her credibility.
"I felt intimidated and ... honestly bullied. And I didn't know what to do. And so I signed it," Daniels said.
Asked why viewers could be confident now that she was telling the truth, she said, "Cause I have no reason to lie. I'm opening myself up for, you know, possible danger, and definitely a whole lot of s***," she said.
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LOS ANGELES - Porn star Stormy Daniels teased President Donald Trump Tuesday over their alleged tryst as it emerged she passed a 2011 lie detector test in which she claimed they had unprotected sex.
The polygraph results came to light as pressure mounted on the president, with an ex-Playboy model suing to be released from another non-disclosure agreement while a former reality star alleging sexual assault took him to court for defamation.
Daniels, who alleges the affair took place in 2006, took to Twitter to warn she was "not going anywhere" despite a legal battle to stop her speaking out, and referenced her sexual encounters with Trump.
"Technically I didn't sleep with the POTUS 12 years ago. There was no sleeping (hehe) and he was just a goofy reality TV star," she tweeted, accusing Trump of bullying her and breaking the law to cover up the affair.
Her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, tweeted a picture of his client strapped to a chair taking the exam, with the hashtag #searchfortruth.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the lawyer paid $25,000 for the video of 39-year-old Daniels -- real name Stephanie Clifford -- answering questions as she was strapped to the polygraph.
A report on the test, commissioned as part of a 2011 interview published only recently by gossip magazine "In Touch," says Daniels was being truthful when she said she had unprotected sex with Trump in July 2006.
LEGAL JEOPARDY
The examination did not, however, corroborate the actress's allegations that the real estate mogul promised to include her on his reality show "The Apprentice."
Lie detector tests are generally not admissible in court because their accuracy is regarded as unproven.
The White House and Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, have repeatedly denied the affair with Daniels, although the attorney admits paying her $130,000 of his own money under a confidentiality agreement.
The Republican president will be vulnerable to accusations that he violated election law if the payment, plus allegations of cash given to silence other alleged mistresses, are considered attempts to sway the November 2016 election.
Ex-playmate Karen McDougal filed a lawsuit alleging a 10-month affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007 and petitioning to be released from a non-disclosure agreement with the National Enquirer, which paid her $150,000 for her story but then shelved it.
McDougal complained in documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court that American Media Inc (AMI), which owns the Enquirer, misled her about the 2016 deal, rendering it invalid.
"Ms McDougal received $150,000 -- nearly half of which went to the lawyer, who she did not realize was colluding with the other side -- and a false promise to jumpstart her career as a health and fitness model," the complaint alleges.
THREATS OF FINANCIAL RUIN
The suit argues that despite the relationship and the cover-up being "open secrets," AMI has pressured McDougal to ignore queries from prominent journalists about the relationship.
"They threaten her with financial ruin if she does not remain 'loyal,'" court papers say.
"AMI, meanwhile, feeds those same reporters false information about Ms McDougal, her relationship with Mr Trump, and its own machinations to bind her to silence."
In another blow for the White House, a New York judge allowed a lawsuit by Summer Zervos, a former candidate on NBC's "The Apprentice," to go ahead, rejecting a request for dismissal.
Zervos, who accuses Trump of defamation, says he fondled her and tried to forcefully kiss her in 2007.
She is among at least 16 women who have accused the president of varying inappropriate behavior, from harassment to sexual assault, all coming forward before or during his White House bid.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all cases, and his campaign team published the account of a cousin of Zervos berating her for publicity-seeking.
Zervos responded by hauling Team Trump before the New York State Supreme Court in January 2017, citing "false and defamatory statements."
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source: news.abs-cbn.com
Porn star Stormy Daniels will go to court on July 12 in a bid to dissolve an agreement stopping her discussing an affair she says she had with President Donald Trump, according to court papers published Wednesday.
Lawyer Michael Avenatti filed a lawsuit on behalf of Daniels last week seeking to toss out the confidential settlement she signed just days before the November 2016 election.
The lawsuit alleges that Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, began an "intimate relationship" with Trump in the summer of 2006 that continued well into 2007.
She has offered to return the $130,000 she received so that she can be free to "speak openly and freely about her prior relationship with the president and the attempts to silence her."
Daniels is also asking to be allowed to publish text messages, photos and videos relating to the president, Avenatti said in a letter to Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen.
"I think it's time for her to tell her story and for the public to decide who's telling the truth," Avenatti said last week.
A copy of the settlement filed in court shows that Daniels received the $130,000 from a company known as Essential Consultants LLC in return for her silence.
Using the pseudonyms Peggy Peterson and David Dennison, Daniels and Trump were to sign the agreement, along with Essential Consultants.
But Trump never signed, providing the basis for Avenatti's attempt to have it thrown out and release Daniels from her obligations.
Daniels is asking for presiding judge Elizabeth Feffer to be replaced, arguing that she has a conflict of interest because she is seeking an appointment to a seat in federal court.
The White House has denied any sexual encounter between Trump and Daniels.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Adult-film actress Stormy Daniels sued President Donald Trump on Tuesday, alleging he never signed a nondisclosure agreement to keep her quiet about an "intimate" relationship between them.
Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles claiming the agreement is invalid and she is free to publicly discuss her relationship with Trump.
The lawsuit, which Clifford's attorney Michael Avenatti published in a tweet, says that she signed both the agreement and a side letter using her stage name on October 28, 2016, days before the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Trump's attorney Michael Cohen signed the document the same day, but Trump never signed the document, the lawsuit claims.
The "hush agreement" as it is called in the lawsuit refers to Trump as David Dennison and Clifford as Peggy Peterson. The side letter agreement reveals the true identities of the parties as Clifford and Trump, according to the lawsuit.
Clifford asks in the lawsuit for the Los Angeles County Superior Court to declare the agreement and side agreement invalid and unenforceable.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Avenatti was not immediately available for comment.
According to the lawsuit, Clifford and Trump had an intimate relationship that lasted from the summer of 2006 well into 2007, including meetings in Lake Tahoe and at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Daniels was quoted in a 2011 interview with In Touch Weekly magazine that she had an affair with Trump after they met at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament in 2006, not long after Trump’s wife, Melania, had given birth to their son, Barron.
Cohen has said he paid Clifford $130,000 of his own money in 2016, the year Trump was elected president, but said neither the Trump Organization nor Trump’s campaign was a party to the transaction, though he declined to say publicly what it was for.
The lawsuit said the 2016 hush agreement called for $130,000 to be paid into the trust account of Clifford's then-attorney. In return, Clifford was not to disclose any confidential information about Trump.
The suit alleges Cohen has tried to keep Clifford from talking about the relationship as recently as Feb. 27, 2018.
"The attempts to intimidate Ms. Clifford into silence and 'shut her up' in order to 'protect Mr. Trump' continue unabated," the lawsuit said.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - An American porn star who claims to have had an affair with Donald Trump before he became president now feels free to tell her story, her manager said Wednesday.
After Trump's longtime personal lawyer admitted paying $130,000 to Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, the actress's manager suggested a non-disclosure agreement had been broken.
"Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story," manager Gina Rodriguez told US media.
Trump's aide and special counsel Michael Cohen has refused to say why he paid Daniels the vast sum but was not, as he claims, reimbursed by the "Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign."
Trump declined to comment on the issue. The White House has dodged questions about whether allegations of an affair are true, claiming the matter was dealt with during the campaign.
It has also referred any questions about the payment to Cohen.
Vice President Mike Pence described suggestions of an affair as "the latest baseless allegations against the president."
Last month, celebrity magazine In Touch published a 2011 interview with Daniels -- whose real name is Stephanie Clifford -- in which she details having "textbook generic" sex with Trump.
She recalled meeting Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006, shortly after the president's wife Melania Trump gave birth to their son Barron.
Since the alleged signing of a confidentiality agreement, Daniels has denied the affair took place and then appeared to deny making the denial.
The allegations bubbled away before the election but have resurfaced because of a legal case that claims Cohen's payment may have broken campaign finance laws.
The lawyer said he did nothing wrong.
"The payment to Ms Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone," Cohen said.
He declined to say whether Trump was aware of the payment.
Watchdog group Common Cause launched the legal action, saying they have "reason to believe" that money was "an unreported in-kind expenditure... because the funds were paid for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential general."
The alleged violation of federal campaign finance law "undermines the integrity of democracy in the United States," a letter signed by Paul Ryan of Common Cause reads.
'MAKE AMERICA HORNY AGAIN'
Daniels has been taking advantage of her newfound notoriety.
Last month, she appeared at the Trophy Club strip club in South Carolina as part of a "Make America Horny Again" tour -- a tongue-in-cheek reference to Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan -- that will also reportedly take her to several other states over the next few months.
In a recent appearance on the late night TV talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live" -- right after Trump delivered his State of the Union address -- Daniels deflected questions about the alleged affair and whether she had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
"You can't say whether you have a non-disclosure agreement. But if you didn't have a non-disclosure agreement, you most certainly could say, 'I don't have a non-disclosure agreement.' Yes?" Kimmel asked.
"You're so smart, Jimmy," Daniels answered.
Later in the interview, Kimmel asked, "Have you ever made love to someone whose name rhymes with Lonald Lump?"
"I'll call you whatever you want me to call you, baby," Daniels responded.
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source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - Two decades ago this week US president Bill Clinton declared that he "did not have sexual relations with that woman."
As it turned out, he did -- and he was impeached for lying about his trysts with Monica Lewinsky.
Today, another US president is accused of sexual impropriety -- specifically of paying off a porn star one month before the November 2016 election to keep their adulterous liaison quiet.
Such a bombshell allegation would be the kiss of death to most political careers.
But Trump is no normal politician and in his tumultuous administration, "it's not even the biggest story of the week," wrote Aaron Blake in The Washington Post.
Political analysts are scratching their heads to explain why -- when it comes to Trump -- such a revelation barely elicits a collective shrug.
Clinton, of course, was president at the time and some of his assignations with Lewinsky, a 22-year-old intern, took place in a secluded study by the hallowed Oval Office.
Trump was a private citizen when the 2006 sexual encounter with adult film actress Stormy Daniels was alleged to have taken place.
He was, though, married at the time and his wife, Melania, had given birth to their son less than four months earlier.
Tobe Berkovitz, an associate professor of advertising at Boston University, said Trump displays an uncanny ability to sail past scandals.
"Trump is an anomaly," said Berkovitz, who has served as a political consultant on numerous political campaigns in addition to teaching.
"Look at the litany of other politicians, celebrities and journalists who have just had the trap door open out from under them for behavior that might not be as egregious or as bad as Trump's," Berkovitz told AFP.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump had paid Daniels $130,000 to keep a lid on their dalliance.
Trump, through his personal lawyer, and Daniels, 38, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, have both denied anything ever went on between them.
But In Touch magazine published a 2011 interview with Daniels last week in which she expounds at length and in detail on their relationship and what she described as their "textbook generic" sex.
The In Touch interview, which had not been published before, was conducted prior to Daniels' alleged signing of a secrecy agreement in October 2016.
VOTERS SEEM DISINTERESTED
G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College, said he was a bit surprised at the lack of interest in the Stormy Daniels allegations -- particularly during the current "Me Too" moment of reckoning over sexual misconduct.
"This doesn't seem to have taken hold," Madonna said. "You would think this was something that would have gotten a fair amount of attention but no, not at all.
"There's not been an overriding interest in the American media and the voters seem, what's the word, as though they're disinterested."
Madonna and other analysts said this may be partly due to the constant drumbeat of extraordinary headlines coming out of the Trump White House.
"I can't figure out -- and I've been doing this for a long time -- whether it's because every day there's almost some huge national crisis of one sort or another," Madonna said.
"(Maybe) it's just the fact that it happened in 2006," that Trump was a private citizen and that the sex was -- by all accounts -- consensual, he said.
In any case, Madonna doesn't think Trump has anything to worry about.
"Believe me, with Trump things can change in a heartbeat, but I don't think this has much legs to derail his presidency at this point," he said.
Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for New York magazine, attributed the apparent blase reaction by the public and the press to what could be termed Trump "scandal fatigue."
"You know, he's had so many scandals like this that it kind of almost has a tiring effect on all of us," Nuzzi said on CNN's "Reliable Sources."
Boston University's Berkovitz agreed. "I think what's happened is that some people have perhaps become numb to some of this behavior when it comes to Trump," he said.
"It's not that there's a different standard for Trump," he said. "It's how Trump reacts to the allegations. Trump pulls off the gloves and hits the mobile and starts tweeting. He doubles down on everything."
Berkovitz said this reminds him, "ironically of Bill Clinton."
"The classic 1990s Bill Clinton was to 'Let no charge go unanswered,'" Berkovitz said. "Basically to -- I don't want to say lie -- but to bend the truth dramatically.
"He had no qualms about that."
Daniels, meanwhile, is cashing in on her notoriety.
She appeared at the Trophy Club strip club in Greenville, South Carolina, over the weekend as part of a "Make America Horny Again" tour that will also reportedly take her to several other states over the next few months.
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source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON, United States - President Donald Trump's personal attorney arranged a $130,000 payment to a former porn star before the 2016 election to keep her from going public about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
A White House official categorically denied the report in which the woman, Stephanie Clifford, says she met Trump at a celebrity golf event in 2006 -- a year after he married his current wife, Melania.
Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, says the encounter happened sometime after that, the Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen brokered the payment to the woman in October 2016 -- one month before the election -- under a deal that included a nondisclosure agreement, the sources told the newspaper.
"These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election," a White House official said.
During the presidential campaign, a videotape emerged of Trump boasting that he could grope women with impunity. Several women have accused the 71-year-old of sexual misconduct.
Trump has denied all of the claims as lies, and even suggested the taped comments were falsified. But former "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush said he and seven others witnessed Trump making the lewd remarks.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
